An Iranian court has sentenced the managing editor of the monthly Aftab, Isa Saharkhiz, to four years in jail and barred him from working in the press for five years after he was convicted of publishing articles against the constitution and offending the state media, according to ISNA, the Iranian student news agency. Saharkhiz, …

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday formally charged Thomas Lubanga, founder of the militant Union of Patriotic Congolese, accusing him of enlisting child soldiers in the violence-plagued Ituri district. Lubanga is the first war crimes suspect …

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that he will establish two inquiry committees to investigate Israel's conduct during the latest crisis in the Middle East, one to examine "the functioning of the Government, its proceedings and decision making, and anything else it sees fit to examine," and an internal military investigation …

US District Judge Patricia Seitz of the Southern District of Florida on Monday threw out Florida's Third-Party Registration Law, which had imposed steeply scaled fines on organizations and volunteers who failed to submit voter applications within specified time periods. Seitz ruled that the law "unconstitutionally discriminates in favor of political parties by excluding …

An Australian court on Monday ordered terror suspect Joseph Terrence "Jihad Jack" Thomas to stay within the city of Melbourne and imposed an evening curfew in the first use of controversial "control orders" authorized under anti-terror legislation enacted late last year. Police requested the measures Sunday as the government still believes Thomas to be a …

An increase in Sudanese troops in the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan could lead to a new human rights crisis there, Amnesty International warned Monday as the UN Security Council prepared to consider a proposal to deploy 20,000 UN troops to the area. Sudan denies any wrongdoing in Darfur and has proposed …

The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has refused to grant an injunction to halt a new Oklahoma law that requires parental notification at least 48 hours in advance of an abortion for a minor while Nova Health Systems, the parent group of Tulsa's Reproductive Services clinic [clinic …

Two relatives of Hamid Hayat, who was convicted earlier this year of attending a terrorist training camp, have been prevented from re-entering the United States after a trip to Pakistan unless they submit to questioning by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle. Hayat was convicted …

Plaintiffs in the 10-year-old Indian Trust case [Cobell v. Norton litigation website] on Monday petitioned the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reconsider a decision to pull an outspoken judge from the case. In July, the appeals court ruled that Judge Royce Lamberth's July 12, 2005 ruling [PDF text; …

Jordan's National Assembly on Sunday approved anti-terror legislation that opponents predict will unnecessarily curtail individual liberties. The bill, which will become law when signed by King Abdullah II, is Jordan's first attempt to address terrorism since the deadly Amman hotel bomb that killed 57 people in 2005. In May, the political …

Sunni Iraqi legislator Tayseer al-Mashhadani, kidnapped on July 1 by as-yet-identified captors, has been released on the eve of the launch of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's national reconciliation project announced earlier this summer. Al-Maliki described Saturday's release as a "gift". Al-Mashhadani's captors had previously demanded the release of all Shiite prisoners, an end to airstrikes …